U.T.E.R.U.S. and fundraising for conception

One of the really tragic things about going through fertility treatments is its’ expensive and when you’re single and you’ve got 1 income or just your savings, it’s even more troubling because you’ll ran out quicker. I started a blog actually in 2005 to chronicle my experience of becoming a single mother, I didn’t know it takes so long, 13 IUI’s, many failed attempts, but as I was writing I found community, other women, other families that were trying to have children of their own and when I started to very honestly say I want to keep going but I cant afford it; that’s seriously one of the hardest moments is that you have that desire, you have that need, you have that readiness, but something like money is preventing you from going. Its really hard not to become bitter about it; I actually became very sad after my miscarriage and I realized that I have embryos in storage in clinics in New Jersey but it will probably be years before I could afford to try again. It was so crushing, what happened next was my families version of a miracle, a lot of my readers got together, I had no idea and they created a fund raiser for me and they made bracelets, knitted sweaters and rummage through their basement looking for things they could sell on ebay, people donated money and I started making different graphic designs for people and using that money , it was like this big whoosh of love and support and we believed in you, we want you to be able to try again; and it was that cycle that I did conceived my son. I actually felt a lot of pressure from literally thousands o people contributing towards this and if it fails, I will feel guilty. But when it didn’t fail it was pretty amazing and there are actually people all over the world that lay claimed the parts of my son, there’s a woman in Florida that claims his eyelashes, a woman in Washington that said those elbows came from me, it’s pretty magical.

Dresden Shumaker

Single Mom & Blogger

Dresden Shumaker blogs at Creating Motherhood, a site she created in 2005 to chronicle her path to single parenthood. She was honored as a BlogHer "Voices of the Year" keynote speaker in 2012. A former Hollywood insider, Dresden now spends her days working in PR and new media for a Philly tech startup and her evenings negotiating with her three year old son about the number of toys he may bring into the bathtub. Dresden is a single mom and lives in a multigenerational home in Philadelphia.

One of the really tragic things about going through fertility treatments is its’ expensive and when you’re single and you’ve got 1 income or just your savings, it’s even more troubling because you’ll ran out quicker. I started a blog actually in 2005 to chronicle my experience of becoming a single mother, I didn’t know it takes so long, 13 IUI’s, many failed attempts, but as I was writing I found community, other women, other families that were trying to have children of their own and when I started to very honestly say I want to keep going but I cant afford it; that’s seriously one of the hardest moments is that you have that desire, you have that need, you have that readiness, but something like money is preventing you from going. Its really hard not to become bitter about it; I actually became very sad after my miscarriage and I realized that I have embryos in storage in clinics in New Jersey but it will probably be years before I could afford to try again. It was so crushing, what happened next was my families version of a miracle, a lot of my readers got together, I had no idea and they created a fund raiser for me and they made bracelets, knitted sweaters and rummage through their basement looking for things they could sell on ebay, people donated money and I started making different graphic designs for people and using that money , it was like this big whoosh of love and support and we believed in you, we want you to be able to try again; and it was that cycle that I did conceived my son. I actually felt a lot of pressure from literally thousands o people contributing towards this and if it fails, I will feel guilty. But when it didn’t fail it was pretty amazing and there are actually people all over the world that lay claimed the parts of my son, there’s a woman in Florida that claims his eyelashes, a woman in Washington that said those elbows came from me, it’s pretty magical.